I wrote book reviews of Bernhard Siegert's forthcoming "Cultural Techniques: Grids, Filters, Doors and Other Articulations of the Real" and of Florian Sprenger's "Medien des Immediaten. Elektrizität, Telegraphie, McLuhan" for the forthcoming issue of PARAGRAPH. It was a pleasure to be able to contribute something to this great journal, and also to comment on trends in germanophone media studies for Edinburgh University Press, which has done so much in recent years to put cutting edge conceptual work before anglophone readers. I'm also pleased to review something coming out from Fordham, another press championing pathbreaking publications and translations. The late Helen Tartar championed publication of this book by Siegert and perhaps this review can serve as a small tribute to her important and enduring legacies in critical thought.